All articles filed in gabriellesoria

I’m Gabrielle—a writer, photographer, and ad creative. I left home at 17 and haven’t stopped moving yet. From San Francisco to Boston, from Bangkok to Berlin, from New York to Atlanta, exploring everywhere in between.

It looked like a giant pile of dirt. Maybe it was because of the harsh morning sun. Or the fact that we’d been traveling since 4am, coasting on 3 hours of sleep from the night before. It wasn’t until we’d followed the neatly tiled path down a sweeping curve that the famous temple—one that’s often…

The C Boarding Group has put together a list of the best travel blogs of 2018, and I’m super excited to share that Up and Gone made the cut! Check out the list—featuring some other fantastic travel resources—here!

Visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza is a must for any trip to Egypt. But when doing research for our trip, I was surprised to see how many travelers visit the pyramids as a stop-gap between their arrival in the country and their tours beginning—often jamming this ancient site into a two-hour slot. Considering how…

This post is part of a series. You can read about the origins of our travel tradition here. You get sort of used to being disappointed by things in real life. The Mona Lisa? Much smaller than expected. Notré Dame, smaller. The Statue of Liberty, smaller. So when I read in advance of our Egypt…

The city of Berlin mimics the fashion of the changing the seasons. In summer, the city is spilling out of itself, everything hanging out, loose and easy. In the winter, things button up tight again, with thick curtains and heavy doors as metaphorical layers and zips. But that doesn’t mean you should rule out a…

Today marks my 33rd month in Germany. It may seem a little odd to count time in months if you aren’t the parent of a toddler, but as an expat, tracking the time of your residency makes by months more sense. With my particular visa, the EU Blue Card, I’m eligible to apply for German…

I learned the phrase, “an embarrassment of riches” in a college poetry class, but I never fully understood it until we walked into the Egyptian museum. Many museums around the world have Egyptian pieces or play host to Egyptian exhibits, whether temporary or permanent. To have one stone sarcophagus, one golden mummy mask, one ancient…

Cairo is pretty well-known for tourist scams, and falling for one can ruin your day (or worse, your trip). So, how can you avoid scams in Cairo? Research and street smarts will definitely help, but at the end of the day, a confident, firm voice is going to be your strongest line of defense.

Cairo is often in the American news for all the wrong reasons, but there’s more than a few reasons to dedicate a portion of your Egypt trip to Cairo. First of all, it’s huge—the largest city not just in the Middle East and Arab world, but on the continent of Africa. Nicknamed, “The City of…

I entered my thirties with one goal: to get out of my comfort zone more often. Our recent trip to Egypt flung the door to my comfort zone wide open, and with surprising gentleness, ushered me out of it. What exactly does that mean? Well, it was way easier to tour Egypt than I imagined…